1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Installing the Port Engine III

With the Cummins engine mounts modified to fit my boat, the original engine beds cut off and new ones fabricated, and the engine bilges clean, next I need to mount the new engine beds, paint everything, and align the engine and gear to the propeller shaft.

Epoxy thickened with cabosil and powdered aluminum make a robust bonding agent

Slather on the thickened epoxy and prepare to clamp

Clamp in place, then scoop up and redistribute the excess epoxy that gets squeezed out

I use the excess epoxy to smooth the stringers where I cut off the old engine beds. It makes a sticky mess, though…have to be careful where you touch.

Clamped and curing

Front engine beds get the same epoxy & clamp treatment

Next day, off come the clamps

With the clamps off, I moved the engine into position to mark and drill the vibration isolator holes.

Couplers aligned. It’s time to drill vibration isolator holes

After drilling the vibration isolator holes, I used my home-built gantry to lift and move the engine out of the way.

Sand the stringers and engine beds with 80 grit

Outside stringer has plenty of clearance for the gear cooler

Inside rear stringer/engine bed is drilled and sanded

Outside rear engine bed drilled and sanded

Paint one side of the engine bilge & stringers, then slide the engine over and paint the other side

Next day, Devoe 235 Bar Rust is cured

Note the epoxy coating covers the inside of the bolt holes as well as the exterior surfaces. I never, ever want to have to paint this bilge again. 🙂

316 hardware coated with TefGel to completely isolate the metals

I know…it’s probably overkill. But I really, really, really never want to have to do this again. Keeping corrosion from starting is much better than fixing corrosion problems after they’ve started.

Front stringers are ready

316 SS hardware augments the epoxy bond up front, too.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m using ceramic bubbles as an additive to the Devoe 235 Bar Rust epoxy I’m applying in the bilge spaces. Ceramic bubbles’ claim to fame is that it toughens coatings and also has insulating properties that lessen condensation. I don’t know if it actually works or not, but I bought a bag of the stuff back in 2009 when I first sandblasted and painted the bilges so I figure I might as well use it up here. One thing I know the ceramic does is make the epoxy absolutely resistant to flowing out smooth. You can’t roll and tip to get a smooth, glossy surface with this stuff. It’s kind of similar to very fine, roll-on non-skid.

Ready to align, with a dial indicator on the shaft and a feeler gauge for the coupler

It took less than 15 minutes to align the shaft and gear couplers to within 0.002″. Then I installed the Globe Drivesaver using the hardware I bought to replace the wrong-sized cap head bolts that Globe sends out with their kit. Lesson learned: Do Not Buy Globe Drivesavers. Still…I own ’em, so I might as well use ’em.

Globe Driversaver hardware–the wrong stuff and the right stuff

The short bolts on the right are the ones Globe supplied that don’t fit this application even though they claim it does. The 1/4″ longer bolts on the left are the ones this application requires.

With the Drivesaver installed, I pressed the stuffing box and hose onto the shaft log

Here’s another one of those Harbor Freight tools that’s worth the investment: the hydraulic port-a-power. It’s got a million and one uses, and I think I paid $75 for the kit on sale using a coupon.

Cutting Teflon packing at an angle so the ends overlap

Three turns of packing ought to do it

Safety wire on the coupler bolts and this Port Cummins 6CTA is installed!

I lost one of the T-bolt clamps for my stuffing box, but I suspect I’ll find it as I install more of the engine parts (e.g. strainers, exhaust, etc).

Boom…engine’s in, don’t need a chainfall any more

Salon floors going back in

Breaking down the gantry

With the beam loose, off comes the trolley

And then there was one…

Salon steps back in place, port engine install is a wrap…for now

Getting the engines installed was a big priority for 2015 and I expected to have it done back in the summer. Unfortunately, when the boat next to mine blew up in July, it threw a wrench in my schedule. Even if that didn’t happen, Motion Windows messing up my helm window build would have kept me from splashing this year anyway. It’s always something.

Speaking of Motion Windows…

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Motion Windows’ Response

1969 Chris Craft Roamer Refit: Installing the Port Engine II

After setting up the gantry, cutting off the original engine beds, and sending the original Cummins engine mounts off for modification, I’m ready to finish the port engine installation. It’s going a lot quicker than the starboard engine installation…lots of lessons learned there.

Before: inner rear engine mount needed machining

Rear engine mount with slot relocated to fit the Roamer

Rear engine bed parts made from 3/8″ thick aluminum angle

My Shopsmith Mark V table saw with the band saw and 12″ disk sander attachments made quick work of manufacturing the engine beds. It’s really nice to be able to use woodworking tools when machining aluminum, and the Shopsmith packs a lot of different tools into a small footprint.

Aluminum engine bed bonded with West System epoxy thickened with aluminum powder and cabosil

Front engine bed cut from 3/8″ aluminum angle

Filthy engine bilge needs some scrubbing

For an engine room that hasn’t had an engine run in it since I sandblasted and painted the bilge in 2009, there was a lot of oily residue under this engine. The oil actually came from the Ford Lehman engine I initially installed that was rebuilt by Chesapeake Marine Engineering. Consistent with the quality of other work Aric Euler did for me, the engine leaked oil and made a mess. The Lehmans are long gone though, and now the oily mess is, too. Good riddance!

Engine bilge cleaned up nicely

I also have to say that gantry I made is slick! [pats self on back]. Being able to move this one-ton engine around with one hand, or rotate it 90 degrees to get it out of the way is super helpful.

ZF 280A marine gear sump doesn’t clear the engine bed frame

The Cummins engines and ZF gears are identical side-to-side, so the clearance problems are somewhat different from the port side to the starboard. It turns out the port side was far easier to fit.

Bosch jigsaw with a metal-cutting blade easily makes space for the ZF gear

Moroso 400w engine oil pan heater installed

After sanding the paint off the aluminum oil pan, I wiped down the surface with acetone and bonded the Moroso oil pan heater directly to the metal. Then I ran a bead of RTV silicone around the pad and let it sit for 24 hours. With these oil pan heaters installed, I won’t need the (reportedly) troublesome intake air heaters that come from the factory on these Cummins engines. I may remove those later.

Original seacock has to go

The original seacocks were 1-1/2″, which is too small for the Cummins 6CTAs. I’ll cut out the old pipe and weld in new 2″ standpipes later, but first I need to remove the old seacock while the engine is out of the way. The tough part is getting the pipe wrench to bite without damaging the seacock (coming soon to the For Sale section) and still have swing room, but without bashing fingers on the metal framing. Demonstrating the timelessness of “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” I used a 2×4 to swing the pipe wrench and get the seacock moving.

Boom

Ready for the hole saw from the under-side

The epoxy bonding the rear engine beds together will take a day to cure, then I’ll bond them and the front engine beds to the stringers and paint everything with Devoe Bar Rust 235 epoxy coating in tintable white base. After that, I’ll drill and bolt the engine beds to the stringers to augment the epoxy bond and then final fit the engine.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Port Engine III

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Cummins Engine Install — Coating the Stringers & Final Fit

With the vibration isolator landing pads done and motor mounts modified, the last step to getting this engine resting in its ultimate location is to epoxy coat the stringers and do the final alignment.

New forward vibration isolator landing pads are on the same plane on both sides

After the last test fitting, once I had the gear and shaft couplers aligned to within 0.005″, I marked the holes for the vibration isolator bolts. After moving the engine out of the way with the gantry, I drilled an 1/8″ pilot hole then used  increasingly larger drill bits until I finally opened up the 1/2″ hole.

Rear vibration isolator landing pads spread the load

New Moroso 400w oil pan heaters should keep the engines toasty in winter

I’ve had these oil pan heaters for a while, so it was nice to finally install them. Truth be told I almost forgot about them (like when I left the washer in the aft stateroom head), so it was good that I remembered before bolting the engines down for the last time. After taking the pic above, I ran a bead of high temp RTV around the perimeter of the heater to seal the edge. The Cummins 6CTA marine oil pan made it a bit challenging to install since it doesn’t have a flat bottom. These heaters have to be in 100% contact with a heat sink or they burn up. Even little bubbles caused by a surface that’s not perfectly flat might cause it to fail, so I broke out the sander and knocked it back to flat and smooth bare metal. Why anybody thought it was a good idea to put the company logo on the bottom of the oil pan is beyond me but it’s gone now.  🙂 The heater pad seemed to conform to the shape just fine.

With the holes drilled and pan heater installed, it’s time to bust out the stinky Devoe 235 epoxy coating.

Rolled and tipped Devoe 235 epoxy coats the assembly

Devoe is super tough stuff, but it’s an industrial coating so it doesn’t roll and tip to a pretty finish. But for the engine room, I’m more interested in protecting the metal than super shiny gloss. In addition to coating the stringers and landing pads, I also put another coat in the engine bilges.

Devoe 235 epoxy-coated front stringer and engine pan

Epoxy coating is done. It should be adequately cured in 24 hours.

Tefgel on all 316 stainless vibration isolator bolts

Tefgel lubricates threads, prevents galling, and controls corrosion. With the inside of each bolt hole coated with Devoe epoxy, direct metal to metal contact shouldn’t be a problem. But Tefgel is cheap insurance.

Front vibration isolators…DONE!

Rear vibration isolators…DONE!!

Shaft alignment is within spec, but the DriverSaver hardware isn’t!

Having paid $300 for a chunk of rubber, I expected Globe to send the right size bolts with its DriveSaver kits. But they use 1/2″ bolts instead of the 5/8″ ones ZF used for the gear coupler, so I had to buy an adapter kit. But the bolts that came with the DriveSaver kit are so short that only one thread sticks out past the lock washer on the gear-side of the flange. Also, the instructions for these Made-in-America rubber donuts were completely wrong: the gear flange is male, but the instructions say it should be female, and the bolts are completely different from the male to female side of the Drivesaver. I emailed the company and showed them the problem. We’ll see if they respond.

Longer bolts on the gear flange side should solve the problem; prop shaft-side bolts seem fine

In spite of this latest minor setback, the engine is in its final resting place. I can wrap up the DriverSaver install when new, longer bolts arrive. So that’s a wrap for the heavy lifting.

Time for the gantry to get out of the way

I’m really pleased with all of the space around this engine. Maintenance should be a breeze (crossing fingers here).

It took less than 10 minutes to disassemble the gantry

I cannot tell you how nice it is to have floors back in the salon!

Et voila! Done! (sorta)

The fuel system is 75% done, since I ran the supply and return tubing when I installed the hydraulic steering. The electrical will be a good project for the winter or, more likely, next spring. I plan to install the other engine and wrap up the exhaust systems before winter sets in again. But for now, I’m calling the starboard engine install a wrap.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The Aft Deck Hard Top (again)

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Galley Bulkhead

With all of the aft stateroom walls installed, I need to get the galley bulkhead installed if I’m going to splash the boat in the fall of 2015. The panels have been cut and ready to install since 2013, but I’ve been too busy doing other things, like the exterior paint.

Bulkhead panel cut and fitted (but not installed) since 2013

Pull the heavy bulkhead out to prep for final installation

That 3/4″ okume marine ply is heavy stuff. Not as heavy as some, but it’s a handful.

Glue and screw 1″x1″ mahogany cleats around each compartment opening

I redesigned the bow seat and made a vast improvement over Chris Craft’s original design. Whereas the original design was inaccessible empty space that had no supports across its 10′ span, my design is taller (for more comfortable sitting), it’s crowned (so water naturally runs off), and the five panels that create four compartments under it also support the seat. The center compartments under the bow seat are accessible from (soon to be installed) hatches on the exterior, and the outside compartments will most likely be accessible from the interior.

Cleats in, surfaces coated…ready for panel install

All interior surfaces of the compartments are heavily coated with epoxy, and the bottom panels also have a layer of fiberglass that extends up the sides a couple of inches. It would be prettier if I fully finished the inside of the compartments, but these are line storage compartments that won’t stay clean no matter what I do.

After wetting out all of the panel edges with epoxy several times, I mixed some wood flour and cabosil with the epoxy and applied that bonding agent over the wet edge. Finally, I mixed up some Devoe 236 primer and coated the exposed aluminum. The catalyst is a few years old and it changes to a red color over time, which is why the primer that should be white is pink.

Wet out the panel and apply epoxy thickened with wood flour to the bond areas

First galley bulkhead panel glued and screwed in place

Second galley bulkhead panel glued and screwed

I used my Kreg R3 Jr. pocket hole jig, in addition to epoxy and the wood flour and cabosil concoction, to glue and screw the joint between the two panels. The joint in the first panel was done using conventional joinery — route out grooves, glue in a spline, then use clamps to pull the panels together — but epoxy and the wood flour cabosil blend is such a strong bond that you don’t need to go through all of that work. Just make sure the panel edges are true, and wet them out with epoxy until they won’t drink any more. Apply the wood flour and cabosil-thickened epoxy, and the pocket screws pull the panels tightly together. Just make sure your bit driver clutch is set fairly low. On my Makita, setting the clutch to 4 (out of 16) pulls the panels together just fine without overdriving the screw.

After bolting the bottom edge of the panels to the aluminum framing that supports the floor of the galley, the bulkhead is rock-solid. Booyah.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the Bow Seat Hatches

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Wrapping Up the Bow Hatch Installation

With the first attempt at installing the bow hatch ending in having to remove a bunch of rotten plywood from around the hatch opening, the next step was to rebuild what nature had destroyed.

First, smooth off the hatch opening, remove all corrosion, then coat with Devoe Bar-Rust 233H epoxy primer

The Devoe Bar-Rust is great stuff, but I was using the remainder of a can I opened when we sandblasted and primed the hull several years ago. Over time, the catalyst changes color to red (as does West System), which turns the white Bar-Rust pink! Fortunately, according to the company, it doesn’t affect the durability or cure of the finished coating. And since this will be out of sight, it will also be out of mind…our little secret. 😉

Zero exposed aluminum

Chris craft left these edges uncoated, which allows aluminum oxide to start at the edge and work under the primer and fairing compound, popping them loose. By fully encapsulating the aluminum, as well as the silicon bronze screw heads that I mentioned in the last article, I hope to never have problems with the paint on the foredeck.

Oy vey

How many plies???

So, what I see going on here is: 1) no coating on the edges, which permits water into the grain; 2) doug fir marine ply, which tends to get cracks in the grain over time (and that permits even greater ingress of water); and 3) several layers of plywood of varying thicknesses bonded together to make up the full height. But for the life of me I can’t tell what sizes of ply they are. There’s at least one 3/4″ (and maybe two) but then I also see maybe a 3/8″ and 1/2″…or is that two 3/8″???

Either way, the important thing is to get the final piece I make to be the right height regardless of the combination I use.

Good thing I had some BS1088 Lloyds-rated okume lying around

Rip off a piece of ply with my Eureka Zone track saw

Cut Two to fit the opening between the frames

The water stains are just surface imperfections. This panel has been dry for 10+ years.

Nice test fit

Mark the opening from above

Makita jigsaw finishes off the hole nicely

After cutting two panels out of the okume ply, it became clear I couldn’t make the whole structure out of okume because it’s not as thick as 3/4″ doug fir. I wasn’t getting the thickness I need.

3/4″ doug fir marine ply makes up the final height

I’d been saving some of these plywood scraps for years, wondering if I’d ever use them. Turns out they came in very handy.

Out with the old, in with the new

I glued, clamped, and then screwed the new panels together, then wetted out the still-tacky Devoe primer on the hatch opening with epoxy. Next, I mixed up some epoxy thickened with wood flour and cabosil and applied it generously to the mating surface of the new plywood, then clamped it to the underside of the deck.

Clamped in place overnight

Good fit, and a solid epoxy bond all the way around.

Next, dry fit the hatch and mark and drill holes

The holes are drilled oversized

After drilling the screw holes, I taped the bottom of each hole and filled the holes with epoxy mixed with the slowest hardener. Overnight, the epoxy wicked into the plywood around each hole and the hole in the aluminum was also coated. This effectively encapsulates the wood and aluminum, isolating it from exposure to air or any water that might one day seep past the sealant I’ll use.

316 stainless machine screws and locknuts  instead of the original silicon bronze wood screws

Next morning, I countersunk the under-side so the nuts will be inset

I also re-drilled the holes to clear out excess epoxy. The holes are 0.004″ larger than the #10-24 machine screws.

Sikaflex 295LOT seals the hatch to the deck

Thread in the machine screws all around before putting the nuts on below

Nut time

Sikaflex on the epoxy-coated ply will be covered by flashing later

Boom

Done

I’ll install the hatch glass later. We’re going with tinted glass all around, and I will be ordering all of it at the same time. But I need to get the new windshield frame installed before I know what shape to make the helm station side glass. It’s a process…

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Transforming the Tent (once again)

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing the propeller shafts

This one’s been a long time coming.

For the second time on this refit, I’ve installed brand new cutlass bearings and put the shafts in. The first time around, back in 2009, I was still using the original 1.5 inch Aquamet 17 shafts, which seemed more than adequate for the 120hp Lehman diesels I installed on the first go-round. Since we decided in 2012 to run with Cummins 450 Diamonds instead, we cut off the old strut barrels and welded on new ones last fall that are sized for the new 1.75″ Aquamet 22 shafts. I had to resize the phenolic bearing housings just a bit because the heat of welding moved two of the strut barrels around just a bit. Removing just a wee bit of the phenolic bearing housing allows the bearing to move around inside the strut barrel, which allows them to self-align when the shafts get slid into place. Epoxy fills the interstitial space between the phenolic bearing and aluminum strut barrel, which “float aligns” the bearings and locks them in place in perfect alignment.

Brand new shafting off to the machine shop

Cutlass bearing fits in the strut barrel but is still a bit too tight for float alignment

Shopsmith 12″ disc sander helps ensure consistent material removal

Black marks indicate tight spots…back to the Shopsmith sander.

Nice fit…just enough gap for a good epoxy bond and flexibility for alignment purposes

Stern tube bearing looks good

Dry-fitting the shafts

Dry fitting the shafts was a good idea, just to verify that the bearings all had enough clearance from the strut barrels to self-align. But I gotta tell ya…those one-piece shafts are heavy! After dry fitting, the shafts and bearings came out (after I marked the bearing orientation) and I mixed up the epoxy potting compound.

Cutlass bearings float aligned in thickened West System epoxy

First, I treated the aluminum with Alumiprep and Alodine, scrubbed in with a stainless brush. After the metal dried, I mixed up some West System epoxy and thickened it with their 422 barrier coat additive (which basically looks like aluminum powder). After coating the inside of the strut barrel and phenolic bearing housing, I slid the bearings home. Then, just to be sure of good coverage, I used a syringe to inject potting material in via the 1/4-20 set screw holes on either side of the strut barrel.

Bearings float aligned and struts get barrier coated little by little

“Hot coating” Devoe Coatings barrier coat over West System

Good bearing clearance all the way around

I’ll smooth out the barrier coat later, and then apply one or two final coats of Devoe, followed with Pettit Vivid bottom paint.

The float alignment process worked well. A week has passed and with the epoxy fully set I can easily rotate the shafts with one hand. Now that the shafts are in, I need to obtain and install propellers so I know exactly where the gear coupler will need to be. Once I know that, I can move the engines back and install them on the engine beds I started building a month or so ago.

But until the props show up, there’s plenty of other things to do.

Next up on our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Classic Chrome Bits & Pieces

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Prepping the Aft Enclosure for Primer

Since I  de-SMIB-ified the helm station door, it was time to prep the aft enclosure for primer. Aside from all of the nooks and crannies associated with the framing on the inside, which will make sanding a challenge, I also want to mechanically fasten the top of the enclosure to the hardtop in more places. With screws holding it together on the interior side, I’m thinking a nice, heavy layer of 1708 fiberglass on the exterior seam will be good, especially if we do fillets as we have elsewhere on the boat.

The whole process starts with sanding….lots of it.

We use combinations of 36, 60 and 80 grit to knock the mill scale and other residue off the aluminum plate, which also provides a good mechanical bond for the primer.

Next, a layer of heavy fiberglass bonds the aluminum to the hardtop.

Epoxy bonds to the fiberglass hardtop well enough, but we add West System 404 adhesive filler to the resin we use to wet out the aluminum. This approach promotes adhesion and reduces the possibility of the fiberglass popping off the aluminum down the road, which (I’m told) it tends to do without adhesive in the epoxy. We also push the thickened epoxy into the joint to eliminate gaps between the aluminum and FRP hardtop and make an overall stronger bond.

The result is a smoothly radiused, fiberglass reinforced joint.

On the inside, #14 fasteners secure the aluminum to the hardtop.

The screws all attach to the mahogany frames of the hardtop.

Same approach on the starboard side

While the epoxy for the FRP is still tacky, we hot coat epoxy filler

This is the same approach we used on the cabin top and elsewhere. It really is a time saver.

We’ll let the epoxy cure overnight, then sand and fair again on Sunday.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Priming the Decks

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Priming the Cabin Top & Dashboard

Wow.

That’s all I can say.

OK…not really 🙂 , but seriously, what a slog it’s been to get to this point.

The last time the cabin top on this Chris Craft Roamer was whole, a consistent color, and shiny (to a degree) would have been sometime in the early to mid-1970s, when the boat was repowered with 534ci SeaMaster twin turbo and intercooled gas engines. The salon hatch for repowers that was collapsed has been rebuilt. The cabin top is now bullet-proof. The helm station sliding door openings are done. And everywhere you would have seen a seam between components, you now see nice fillets and rounded corners.

The problem is, though, that the closer you get to priming anything, the uglier it becomes. With complex construction based in aluminum, marine plywood and fiberglass, then topped with fairing compounds of varying colors and other characteristics, everything gets blurred together when a couple of guys spend days with six-foot longboards sanding down the high spots and making sure that every surface is true. Guide coat after guide coat of black spray paint further uglies up the project until it takes a real trained eye to see the beauty that’s just waiting to POP out for all to see.

Well, on Sunday, April 21, 2013, we got some serious poppin’ done!

Filling pinholes with Awl Grip High Build thickened with cabosil.

Pinholes are unavoidable in a faired fiberglass structure the size of a yacht cabin top.  If you prime and sand, then fill pinholes, you could spend a week getting them all and even then you’d probably miss lots that you wouldn’t see until you painted the boat. My weekend fairing/painting crew used the same technique to fill pinholes on the Roamer that they developed at Weaver Boatworks, where they build multi-million dollar sportfishermen on the other days of the week.

The process involves mixing a bit of cabosil with Awl Grip High Build. It’s hard to describe the consistency, but it’s not mayonaise, peanut butter or any of the other terms generally used to describe fairing compounds. It’s not runny…it holds a bit of shape. Let’s just call it the Boatamalan Secret Recipe. (Boatamalan = Boatyard worker of Guatamalan origin, a joking reference to the fairing crew’s Latin American ancestry). Whatever you call it, this stuff works wonders on pinholes and is applied with squeegees.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe on the dashboard

It’s not pretty when applied with a squeegee, but it won’t matter.

FRP door openings ready for Boatamalan Secret Recipe

Just enough Boatamalan Secret Recipe to fill the pinholes.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe isn’t used for shaping. Its only purpose is to fill pinholes. Where it might take a whole weekend to fill pinholes individually later on, it only takes a few hours using this approach.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe gets squeegeed all over the cabin top.

Smooth and pretty doesn’t matter at this point.

A thin layer of Boatamalan Secret Recipe covers the whole cabin top.

Boatamalan Secret Recipe applied

The next step after squeegeeing Boatamalan Secret Recipe all over is to apply Awl Quik, which is basically a sprayable fairing compound. After taping plastic over all of the openings, we fired up the compressor, put filters in the vent fans, and made the tent stinky!

Awl Quik yellow…not the prettiest color

This is sooo much better than before, when all of the different colors of material made it difficult to see the final shape. Now, all of the lines, fillets and rounded outside corners POP!

Dripping with Awl Quik

The painter applied two coats in rapid succession and then one more for good measure. The idea is to put enough Awl Quik on so we don’t sand through the Awl Quik/High Build layer when we longboard it. If we sand through it, we have to spray another coat and that means waiting another day before we can sand. Since we only work weekends on this project, that means another week will go by before we can spray the final primer–Awl Grip 545.

I’m diggin’ on the fillets at the dashboard.

Much nicer than the OE dirt-catching seam.

Before Awl Quik

After Awl Quik

Windshield base is true, strong and flat where it matters.

Check out those lines!

Beautiful fillets and rounded corners at the bow seat windows.

Don’t mind the runs and rough spots!

We applied two heavy coats of Awl Quik right over the squeegeed High Build and cabosil, so the surface reflects that now. The surface imperfections will sand off easily when we longboard. So long as we don’t sand through the High Build/Awl Quik layer, we’ll be applying 545 next weekend!

The bow seat itself got Awl Quik on the 3rd coat.

The painter needed a place to stand to put the second coat on the cabin top, so he waited to coat the bow seat until the last coat.

Salon window supports in Awl Quik

These supports in the salon window tracks are the only vertical structure over the whole length of the salon window openings. They’re made of mahogany and, from Chris Craft, rely on paint and bedding compound to keep rain water from wicking up the wood and rotting it out. Unfortunately, that approach doesn’t last too long.

We made new supports out of mahogany, but then fiberglassed them into place. Not only is this a more integrated approach than the original, it makes it virtually impossible for rain to ever affect the wood. The entire window channel is now fiberglass covered with Awl Quik.

Aft-most salon window opening on the port side.

The dashboard again…just because I love the way it turned out.

And that concludes our tour of the Awl Quik application

Longboarding begins anew next Saturday, bright and early. If we don’t breach the High Build/Awl Quik layer, we’ll have it sprayed in 545 on Sunday.

I’m all giddy! 😉

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Tools of the Trade.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Transforming Tent Model IX, Helm Door & Fillets

Tent Model IX served its winter-time purpose extremely well, holding up without a hitch when Hurricane Sandy came calling and providing lots of space to get work done on the interior. Model IX was the culmination of years of shrink wrap tent-making failures and successes. With winter finally past us (maybe! It is, after all, only April!), it ‘s time to transform Model X into a paint shed.

I began by adding scaffolding aft and working my way around to the other side.

Since we’re not doing any heavy longboarding on the hull this time around, the scaffolding deck is down around where the water line will be. This should give the painter sufficient access to apply nice, wet coats of Awl Craft 2000.

Time to build the second story scaffolding.

The second-story scaffolding is just below deck level.

This scaffolding will allow the painter to step off the deck and paint the exterior of the aft deck enclosure, then step back onto the boat at the transom. A couple of cross braces make a huge difference in stability. The tent plastic itself will greatly add to stability, too, once it’s shrunk.

Reusing concrete forms for the scaffolding deck.

Back in 2008, when we first got the Roamer, I got a good deal on phenolic-faced 4×8 sheets used in concrete forms that are made with waterproof, boil-proof glue. I planned to use it as sub-flooring throughout the boat. But after buying it I found that the phenolic isn’t smooth and doesn’t stay attached very long–it cracked and peeled after a year or two just sitting inside the boat while I was straightening out the paperwork SNAFU. So I ripped it into 24′ x 96″ pieces and used it for the scaffolding deck.

The scaffolding decking is supported lengthwise with two 2x4s per section and more lumber at the ends. You can dance on it! I used screws so it will be easier to sectionally dismantle. If anybody needs a portable paint shed at a bargain price in a couple of months, let me know!

Scaffolding around the bow

There’s a step up in the right side of the pic that allows the painter to reach all the way to the rub rail at the top of the stem.

The long view down the starboard side looking back.

The step up at the bow.

Reused the old bow seat for scaffolding.

The white section of the scaffolding deck is the old bow seat that I cut off and replaced with something better. It follows the curve of the hull pretty good!

From the bow seat to the stern, the decking is all phenolic-faced plywood.

Putting up the paint shed skirt.

I’ll put a new sheet of shrink wrap over the top, but I need a skirt from the ground to about 12″ up because shrink wrap doesn’t come in 60′ wide rolls… and it would be extremely heavy if it did!

I cut this clear shrink wrap plastic off of our 1968 Chris Craft Commander 42 last weekend, in preparation for a spring cruise to see the cherry blossoms. The cruise happened but the blossoms have been delayed by unseasonably cold weather.  By splitting the Commander tent in half, I got enough plastic to do 2/3 of the skirt. Once all the pieces are in place, I’ll weld the plastic together with the shrink torch and tape up the seams. That should happen next weekend, unless the wind continues to blow like the dickens.

Meanwhile, on the inside of the boat…

The helm station door openings are now ready for fiberglass.

Since I last reported on the helm station door openings, we added strips of marine plywood to the steel uprights to make a pocket into which the doors will slide to keep out the weather.

Ready for FRP and fillets!

At the helm station, the dashboard fillets are also done and ready for sanding and primer.

Before: original dashboard pod seam–a great place for dirt to gather and hang out.

After: a nice and smooth fillet

FRP tape and epoxy holds the pod to the cabintop under the fillet.

That’s it for last weekend. Next weekend I’ll finish converting the tent to a paint shed, sand the fillets and prep the helm roof for primer.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fillets!

There are many interior angles on the exterior of this Roamer, and Chris Craft smoothed many–but not all–of them with fillets. Since hard, non-filleted angles are weaker, subject to collecting dirt, harder to wash and tend not to shed rain as well, we’re putting fillets pretty much everywhere there’s a visible, hard interior angle.

Welded deck seam fillets just like the original, but better with modern materials.

We used the same homemade fairing compound we’ve been using for the whole project: US Composites 635 epoxy with 3M microballoons and cabocil (in a 3:2 ratio), mixed to a peanut butter consistency.

Fillets–To Eternity and Beyond!!!

The fillet on the cabin top-to-deck seam covers a heavy layer of 1708 bi-axial fiberglass that we applied over that seam. This approach should be far superior to the painted 1″ quarter-round mahogany that Chris Craft originally used to seal that joint that I talked about in an article on fairing the cabin top.

Same approach around the front of the base of the cabin top.

No more leaks, and looks a whole lot cleaner than the original quarter-round mahogany.

Fillets for every size corner!

At the edges of the new bow seat, we’re using a smaller fillet than what we used down on the deck. But it’s larger than the original fillet that came out of the Chris Craft FRP mold. Hopefully, when combined with the geometry changes we made when we built the seat, it will shed water (and dirt) better than the original, tight radius corner.

Still smaller fillets around the galley window openings.

Out of the original Chris Craft mold, there were no fillets to speak of here. Everything was pretty much hard corners, which collected dirt and propagated cracks.

The deck fillet terminates to a point at midships.

The cabin top-to-deck seam joint is filleted all the way back to the helm station door openings.

The fairing compound on the deck here covers the welded seam where once there used to be the transition from aluminum decks to teak.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Transforming Tent Model IX Into a Paint Shed.